Kyle J. Wilkin

TL;DR: This work presents the simultaneous experimental characterization of one-photon and two- photon excitation channels in isolated CF3I molecules using ultrafast gas-phase electron diffraction and mapped out the real-space trajectories of a coherent nuclear wave packet, which bifurcates onto two potential energy surfaces when passing through a conical intersection.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors observed a substantial acceleration of the ring-opening motion after internal conversion to the ground state due to steepening of the electronic potential gradient towards the product minima and demonstrated the potential of megaelectronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction to elucidate photochemical reaction paths in organic chemistry.

TL;DR: The photochemical electrocyclic ring-opening of 1,3-cyclohexadiene is a textbook organic chemistry reaction that is resolved on the level of atomic distances and on its natural femtosecond timescale using megaelectronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction.

TL;DR: A device is presented that uses pulse compression to overcome the Coulomb broadening and deliver femtosecond electron pulses on a gas target and results in an average beam current that is between one and two orders of magnitude higher than previously demonstrated.

TL;DR: In this paper, the structural dynamics in photoexcited 1,2-diiodotetrafluoroethane molecules were investigated experimentally using ultrafast electron diffraction and theoretically using FOMO-CASCI excited-state dynamics simulations.